Page 26 of I’ll Be There (Montana Fire #4)

He should have never let Blankenship walk away. Conner crouched behind the table—the flimsy wooden table that could maybe slow a bullet, but would find its way to his heart if the shooter took any time with his shots.

“Stop shooting! Let’s talk!”

Another bullet pinged off the edge of the table, and Conner braced himself, his hands over his head. Heat seared across his shoulder.

Time. They just needed time.

By his guess, they had roughly a minute before the dining room ignited.

Already black smoke roiled out of the front pane window.

Sirens fractured the air, the Deep Haven fire department responding from their new digs on the hill.

Too far. The pizza joint would collapse in on itself before they made the winding drive downtown.

Another shot, this one piercing the table, chipping into the sidewalk. “You can have me! Just let everyone out!”

Why hadn’t he simply gotten Liza to safety, then pinged Blankenship’s cell phone, tracked him down, and done exactly what Micah suggested...

Waited for him with a sniper rifle?

No, actually, he wanted this guy up close and personal. Very personal.

“Let’s talk, Blankenship!”

Another shot, and this time the table jerked, the edge splintering off, and heat skidded across his arm. He jerked away, clamped a hand over the graze, bit off a word.

“I’ll come out! Stop shooting! Let them go! ”

Inside, only the roar of the fire bled out into the street. Whatever Darek and Jed were doing—shoot. C’mon, guys!

The fire blew out the glass in the entryway of the pizzeria. More smoke poured out. Conner gaged the angle of the shots and would lay a good bet that Blankenship had lost his line of vision.

Now. They could run right now. He dove back into the building and nearly cracked skulls with Jed.

“C’mon!” Jed held an ax, his face covered with a wet cloth napkin. “Let’s get out of here!” He dropped to his knees. “Take a breath, we’re going up the stairs.”

“What about Rube?” Conner tucked his face into his shirt, his hand on Jed’s arm.

“Evac’d. Keep up.”

Conner could outrun him. Still, he nearly tripped as Jed hauled him up the stairs to the tiny alcove bar. He hit his knees on the top step, the smoke so thick it seared his eyes, turned him blind.

Jed slapped Conner’s hand onto the wall.

“Here, feel the hole!” He coughed even as he pushed Conner into a jagged space where lath and plaster had once covered the wall.

Hands reached through the expanse, grabbed Conner around the collar, his upper arms, and in a second, pulled him through to another room.

He skidded across the carpeted floor, gulping cleaner air, his eyes so thick with mucus they felt aflame.

Water spilled onto his face. “Open your eyes,” said a voice. Darek. Conner fought them open, and clean water flooded his eyes, cleaning them.

Jed lay beside him, doubled over, coughing. Seth was giving him the same treatment. “Lie back. Let’s get your eyes cleaned out.”

Jed let out a word as Seth doused him.

Conner rolled over, found his hands and knees. “What did you do?”

“I know these old buildings pretty well,” Darek said. “Pierre’s connects to an old apartment building. It’s a bookstore and café now, but there are stairs leading down to the parking lot.”

His vision had cleared enough to make out the group, drinking bottled water pilfered from the café area. Ingrid sat with Grace and Ivy and their children at the tables and chairs, and in the corner Liza embraced Raina and baby Layla, who was coughing.

Darek had moved a box in front of the opening, but smoke still billowed out.

John and Casper came up the stairs, moving fast. “The fire department is on the way.”

“We can’t wait,” Conner said, finding his feet. “That fire is going to catch up with us. And Reuben is surgical immediate.”

“We can’t go out the front,” Jed said. “That shooter has the same angle. Maybe better.”

“Then we go out the back,” Micah said.

“And shooter number two?” Conner pushed himself to his feet. “We can’t send everyone out there to be picked off like rabbits.”

Oops, he said that a little too loud, because Casper and Max looked at him like they wanted to hurt him. “We have kids here,” Max said tightly.

“Sorry.”

And right then, his gaze met Liza’s. She had lifted her head at his words and now wore such a destroyed, broken expression he wanted to push past everyone, pull her into his arms, and tell her that it would be okay.

Not even remotely. Not until he found Blankenship and finished this.

Conner bent over, grabbing his knees, hauling in breaths, then he looked up at Micah. “Just us.”

A quick nod, tight jaw, and Micah was no longer a soccer dad. “Stay here,” he said to everyone. “Wait for us to give the all clear.”

Conner pressed Pete’s shoulder as he ran past him and Reuben. “Keep him alive.”

Micah had already unlatched the door to the back stairs, now wedged it open.

The smoke, acrid and ferocious, blackened the already bruised sky behind Pierre’s. “Maybe he won’t see us,” Conner said, and made to open the door wider.

A shot pinged off the metal, and he jerked back. “Sheesh. They mean to burn us alive.”

“Unless,” Micah said, gesturing to the reception tent. Staked out below like peaked frosting, it had so far survived the sparks and flames from the burning building. Set thirty feet from the back door, with pavement on all sides, yes, it might make it through this blaze.

“No...Micah...”

“It will go up fast. And create the smoke we need to cover us. From the ground up.”

Shoot, it made sense. Still, “I’m not leading anyone out until we get that shooter.”

“Agreed,” Micah said, and disappeared.

From the angle of the shot, Conner guessed the shooter off to his right, out of vision, but in perfect line to pick off escapees from Pierre’s.

He didn’t even want to think about how Blankenship might have known about the dinner at Pierre’s. Or what kind of mind decided to burn alive women and children.

What he wouldn’t give for a weapon right now. His Glock, stowed in his glove compartment.

Micah came back, holding a large piece of broken lath. A flaming scarf crackled, tied at the end. “Make a hole.”

Conner crouched, held the door open, and Micah hurtled it out into the twilight. It twisted, the arc of fire drawing circles into the air until it landed, softly, perfectly on the roof of the tent.

The fabric caught immediately, and in a moment, the flames chewed through, the torch dropping onto one of the burlap-topped tables.

Smoke rose, light at first, then thickening as the burlap flamed, gray-black clouds billowing into the air.

Conner just knelt there, holding onto the door handle, watching.

Behind him, Micah said nothing.

The smoke filled the parking lot, rose, fogging the air as sparks lit one table to the next. The fire rolled, gaining speed, and like a locomotive roared through the tent.

“Now,” Micah said and pushed open the door.

In a second, they were flying down the stairs. A shot pinged out, hit the door, another the stairs, but Conner threw himself after Micah, landing in the alley on the other side of the buildings. Micah pulled him in.

“Another minute, and we’re headed through that smoke, behind that pickup. I figure the shooter is on the roof of one of these buildings—my guess is the liquor store. But we need to get out of his line of sight, or at least the one he expects.”

“Affirmative,” Conner said.

The fire department had finally rolled up on Main Street, and Conner wanted to run and warn them, but first he had to get Liza out of that building.

“Run!” Micah lit out through the smoke and fire, heading directly toward the tent.

Oh, this could be a very bad idea. But Conner had followed Micah into battle more times than he could count. Trusted his captain’s instincts with his life.

Micah dodged the edge of the tent, rounded the outside of the fire, and flung himself down behind a truck on the other side of the lot.

Conner slammed in beside him, breathing hard.

“We have a good view of the rooftops from here,” Micah said, turning his shoulder into the truck, craning for a look over the bed. “And the bookstore.”

Conner too turned, keeping low. He spied the open door to the bookstore through the gauzy smoke. Scanned the rooftops.

A flash of sunlight made him blink. He squinted, sighted a baseball cap. “You called it—two o’clock, northwest corner of the liquor store.”

“How do we get up there?” Micah said.

“I have a gun in my truck.”

“Which is parked on the street across from the pizza joint.”

Conner had words, but he managed not to let them fly. “Okay, so we get behind him, get on the roof—”

“Oh no.”

Conner followed Micah’s gaze, and everything inside him pinged, a dark strum of horror.

Liza had peeked her head out the door.

“I think she might have figured out what I was doing with that torch,” Micah said.

Get inside! He wanted to yell at her, but feared attracting the shooter’s attention toward her.

Too late. Conner spotted him rising up, sighting.

Liza stepped out, drawn by the catastrophe of her reception tent, now fully engulfed. In fact, as the flames grew, Conner could hardly make her out.

But she was still a clear shot if the shooter sighted her through the smoke.

“Liza!”

Conner’s voice couldn’t penetrate the roar of the fire.

“He could hit her,” Micah said, rising. “I’m going for the roof—”

“No time.” Conner hit his feet, arms waving. “Over here! I’m over here!” He walked out into the clear, beyond the truck. “Right here, buddy. Right here! ”

Oh, thank God, it worked. Shooter lowered his weapon. Turned to search for the voice.

“Run, Micah!”

Micah scooted around the truck and took off.

The shooter sighted Conner, and in one slick, cool moment, turned his weapon on him. The light glinted off it, and Conner stood in the wide open, just breathing. Please, Liza, don’t watch . He couldn’t even look at her, needing, praying for the shooter’s aim to not wander away.